How this for a travel nightmare: You spend hours trying to secure tickets for your family of six to see “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical,” on Broadway. You fly from Ohio to New York with your spouse and four children; spend thousands of dollars on airfare, hotel, and meals only to find out that a work stoppage by Broadway stagehands means you will not be getting into today’s show.
Can you imagine?
I made up the aforementioned scenario, but I have no doubt that right now there are hundreds of disappointed children walking around the Big Apple. Each of them had tickets to the early matinee of “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical.” A show that cancelled performances as stagehands prepared to strike. But, “Dr. Suess” is not the only musical affected by the strike, more than two-dozen other Broadway plays and musicals are set to go dark today.
According to news reports, the League of American Theatres and Producers and the stagehands’ group, Local One, have been in negotiations for more than three months, but have yet to reach a settlement regarding work rules and staffing requirements. Members of Local One have been working without a contract since the end of July and yesterday they were told by their parent union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, to begin picketing today. The stagehand’s union has 3,000 members, about 500 of them work on Broadway at any given time.
If you are holding tickets to the following Broadway shows this strike does not affect you because they are playing in theaters that are staffed with stagehands who are under a different contract. They are: “Young Frankenstein,””Mary Poppins,””Xanadu,””The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,””Mauritius,””Pygmalion,””The Ritz” and “Cymbeline.” Off-Broadway shows will also keep running.
The last time Broadway went dark was in March 2003 when musicians went on a four-day strike costing the city millions of dollars in lost revenue and disappointing thousands of ticket holders.
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